Catholic Sensibility

Don't get me started on the foster care system A few tickles of conversations here and there about gay individuals or couples adopting children. About a month ago, I heard a piece on NPR which stated there has yet to be a definitive study of children of homosexuals. The CDF naturally has a problem with this. Elsewhere on the net I was accused essentially of being a heretic for the simple suggestion that kids are worse off in the foster care system than being parented by homosexuals. One thing clues me in that this discussion is not about kids. Or their safe and healthy upbringing. Because if it were, the Catholic Church would have come out more strongly against the ills of the foster care system. And it would have done so years ago. It would not have waited for the alleged problems of thousands of kids with gay parents. The hierarchy would have addressed the situation of millions of children without parents. When Anita and I were taking classes for being foster and adoptive parents, we heard a story about a young boy who could have been adopted by his grandmother. The lady was retired, and living in an apartment that didn't permit children. The management looked the other way until the child was five, but then it was time to move or cut the kid loose. Her suggestion to the social services people was that if she could only get a living allowance for housing, she could care for her grandson properly outside of a retirement location. No go. Sadly, the woman and boy separated: she to subsidized elderly housing, he to the foster care system where he bounced from home to facility to home and all over till he landed in jail as a teen. Our facilitator said a social worker estimated the state of Ohio spent about $500,000 on prison, legal costs, social workers, special ed, etc. by the time the lad reached age 18. Maybe he would have been a delinquent under granny, but a nice little $50,000 home somewhere in a small town might have been a good investment for the state. What am I getting at? The CDF needs to lay off the gay parents. They suspect, but there is no proof gays make worse parents than heterosexuals. We have more important issues, namely, the millions of children worldwide who languish in foster care or worse. In almost every case, a child is better off living in a one or two-parent permanent home than in a foster home or group home. You think the world is falling apart because gay couples want to adopt children? Get serious. The world has already come to an end for way too many kids who are buried in circumstances that are no fault of their own. As long as a social service agency runs the prospective adoptive parents through the ringer (our experience), I have little doubt the best parents are adopting the lucky kids. Frankly, I have far more serious worries on my mind for parent-less children. Unless and until the morality of this situation is addressed, I'm afraid the gay adoption flak is little more than using children to manipulate emotions on an unrelated issue.